On 13 Oct 2013, at 17:18, Ian Lepore <i...@freebsd.org> wrote: > On Sun, 2013-10-13 at 16:18 +0100, Mark R V Murray wrote: >> On 13 Oct 2013, at 16:13, Konstantin Belousov <kostik...@gmail.com> wrote: >>> Surely this works, thank you. The rwfile.c content probably should be >>> taken under the #ifdef RANDOM_RWFILE. >> >> OK - thanks for the feedback! >> >>> But I do not see much use for the randomdev_read_file() and >>> randomdev_write_file() functions. It would be better to directly code >>> the VFS calls in the random_harvestq_cache(). For one thing, it would >>> eliminate unneccessary close and open of the entropy file. >> >> There is some uncertainty about the future of that code, so I want >> to keep it that way for now. Writing files from the kernel is making so@ >> very uncomfortable, and there is too much scope for error there. >> > > Indeed, it makes me nervous too, as a heavy user of readonly root > filesystems. If writing this file is so critical that it has to be done > by the kernel, then what happens when it fails? Right now it prints an > error and continues -- if it is not so critical that failure means > panic, then why is the kernel doing it at all?
Good points all. The intent is not to win the arms-race outright, but to win the common-case battles as convincingly as possible. That said, its not looking good for the process, but I still want to give it a decent look before/if yanking it. > Why is the file even in the root filesystem? /var/db seems to be the > right place for a transient file needed by the system. Because that appears to be the best place to put first-boot entropy from sysinstall/bsdinstall. /var/db/entropy/... will also be used if possible; watch this space. > Speaking of errors, that might include things like the current code > calling vn_close() with the FREAD flag on a file open for writing. Thanks :-( :-) M -- Mark R V Murray
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